Developing a Bottom-Up Approach for Strengthening Peace and Security: Some Strategies for Northern Nigeria

Violent conflicts in northern Nigeria have continued to escalate as complex networks of various Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) intensify acts of insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and criminality. Data from Nextier SPD violent conflict database revealed that in 2021, 248 security personnel and 3,333 civilians were killed, and 2,491 others were kidnapped by NSAGs in northern Nigeria. The North West accounted for 55.3 per cent of the civilian deaths, 41.5 per cent of security agents’ death and 71.3 per cent of the kidnap victims. Beyond the loss of lives and properties, the ongoing violent conflicts in northern Nigeria have undermined community resilience and weakened horizontal and vertical social cohesion in communities affected by the violent conflicts.

Governments at all levels and other critical stakeholders have made concerted efforts to address the violence and build peace through various hard and soft approaches. However, a significant weakness of many peacebuilding initiatives in northern Nigeria is the top-down approaches which focus on state institutional capacities and treat the people mainly as subjects in peacebuilding programmes with little or no attention to their local realities, capacities and roles as objects of peacebuilding. Such top-down approaches to peacebuilding tend to ignore the critical place of community resilience and social cohesion in combating violent conflicts and building sustainable peace in conflict-affected communities.

Studies have shown that strengthening community resilience and social cohesion ensures community ownership, solidarity and sustainability of peacebuilding in conflict-affected communities (see also Nwokolo, Dlakwa, Donli, Kwaja, Anyanwu & Maduagwu, 2019). This edition of Nextier SPD Policy Weekly suggests actionable bottom-up approaches for peacebuilding through strengthening community resilience and social cohesion in conflict-affected communities of northern Nigeria.

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